In the Yard

Birds and Dragonflies

Rae Spencer2 Comments

The blue jay babies are fledged, but they haven’t started foraging on their own. They continue to rely on their parents for food. (More about the blue jays here, here, and here.) While the adults flit back and forth, the babies explore the densest parts of our wax myrtle (where I can’t get a picture of them), exercising their voices and wings. There are at least three fledglings, possibly four, though it sounds like there might be a dozen when they shriek in unison.

During occasional blue jay lulls, when the parents forage in other yards (or simply take a break from their raucous brood), doves and sparrows share a turn at the feeder.

The doves gulp seed in greedy excess, then settle on nearby perches to preen and stretch as they digest their meals.

Along with birds, the yard is filling with dragonflies. Eastern Pondhawks have joined last week’s Blue Dashers.

I’ve also seen two or three species I can’t identify, like this golden beauty. (My best guess is a female Needham’s Skimmer. Can anyone confirm or correct that ID?)

Today was hot and humid, just right for June. I mowed through the heat, then sat on the deck to enjoy a fitful breeze stirred by approaching storms. I was tempted, for a moment, to call the yard “mine”. But a burst of blue jay racket reminded me that it isn’t mine at all.

The Cardinals

Rae Spencer4 Comments

Two mated cardinals
Muted mother and masked father
Alarmed and flashed around the corner
Through crepe myrtle, plum, and iris

Their single nestling, un-nested
Precocious and half-fledged
Quavering in the awful sun
Exposed, expelled, exploring
The perilous yard

An infant still shaped to shell
Convex and vexed
Voraciously alive
Irresistibly ugly kernel
Of what might be lovely
Clad in summer plume

Though now all hungry gape
Begging nourishment
Little family of fear on the lawn
Watched by the brooding housewife
Who sits her own reluctant nest
Of amniotic memory
Hatching into phrase

And eager to mature
Like the cardinal chick
Which disappeared next morning
Gone from the woodpile and irises
From the bright wing of father
From the red-headed husband
Whose pajama-clad wife
Frets barefoot in the dew

Crisis Management

Rae Spencer1 Comment

Under attack, trees share their secrets
Spread rumors of invasion
Or infestation, a whiff of stress perfume
Winding through the damaged grove

Whispering the key to survival
Simple and complex molecules seep
From root to root, fungal lines
Of communication ringing

The soil switchboard with toxic
News, rousing a gene, waking
A cascade of defense in pristine leaves
That become jaded, learn the noxious

Knack of bitterness, turn tasteless
In time to repel the siege

Monday, May 28

Rae Spencer8 Comments

A moth, a dragonfly, and a new publication. Little things, yes, but most days are made of little things.

Publication note:  My poem “The Congresswoman’s Brain” was published on vox poetica’s today’s words page over the weekend. It is now on the poemblog. Many thanks to editor Annmarie Lockhart!

Dragonflies Arrive

Rae Spencer4 Comments

Two days ago, the first dragonflies arrived in the yard. I had seen a few cruising through, in previous weeks, but none stopping to stay. This one was a female Blue Dasher, hunting in the pear tree. As I tried to get her picture, I got distracted by another Blue Dasher a few branches over. Beside it, yet another, this one male. I circled the tree, trying to count, but soon gave up counting and concentrated on pictures.

Early this afternoon, they moved into the wax myrtle, which gets the most direct midday sunshine. I suspect they will migrate back to the pear tree by sunset.

So far, the overwhelming majority are Blue Dashers, but Halloween Pennants and Golden Skimmers should show up before too long. Maybe even a few new species. This will be our twelfth summer here, and I had never seen damselflies in the yard before this spring. Now they make regular stops in the irises.

I love how the yard changes from season to season and year to year. It’s an ordinary yard on an ordinary street in an ordinary city, proving over and over again the extraordinary nature of “ordinary”.